


Nightmare

by Fenix21



Series: In My Silence 'Verse [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Revelations, awful truths, brother cuddles, mute!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 01:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7246264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>'It was you.'</em>
</p><p> <em>The air left Dean's lungs in a rush with the words, and he couldn't pull anymore in. He felt like a vice had closed around his chest, but he shoved the words out anyway, yielding to Sam's silent demand.</em></p><p>  <em>'You're the—' No. Nonono. Dean couldn't bring himself to say the word out loud. Wouldn't say it. Couldn't go that far, but he knew Sam knew that he understood what that missing word was. He licked his dry, cracked lips. 'It's you. It's how you get them to—how you get rid of them, or-or whatever it is you do. They know you…'</em></p><p> Dean learns a terrible truth he never wanted to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Directly follows the events of [Alive](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6146065/chapters/14081845)

February 2000

 

There were nightmares. Of course, there were nightmares. Dean had seen some of the mental trauma caused by demon possession first hand. Nightmares were often the least of their victim's problems and a guaranteed reaction. 

Dean just hadn't expected them to be his own.

'Sam!'

Dean's shout was still an echo in the room when he came awake, throat dry and constricted around his brother's name, bare chest heaving and drenched in sweat, sheets a knotted tangle around his legs. He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, breath stuttering in and out of him. A hand slid across his chest, pressed down a little.

Dean?

Dean immediately turned into it, felt Sam's surprise at his reaction in the fraction of a second pause before he reached around his older brother and drew him in tight along the line of his body. Dean buried his face in Sam's neck and wrapped him up in his arms and squeezed so tight that Sam wheezed a little. 

Dean was soaked. The sheets were soaked. His skin was already chilling despite the heater blowing on full from across the room. He had no idea how long he'd been dreaming before he finally cried out and woke himself, but it felt like an eternity trapped in the dark behind his eyelids, held prisoner by his own reflection in black, black eyes…

He shuddered hard, pressed his face harder into Sam's throat and nearly choked on a sob. Sam held him tighter, hooked a leg over Dean's hip and tugged him as close as it was humanly possible to get, and still Dean tried to get closer, to crawl in under Sam's skin and hide from that horrible vision.

Sam stroked his hair, the back of his neck, his shoulders, fingers winding out patterns against his sweat drenched skin. Dean couldn't pick them out, but he didn't need to, he knew they would be symbols, sigils of protection and peace. 

'Sammy…'

Sam paused for a moment, waited for Dean to finish, but when he said nothing more, he continued his stroking, settling his cheek more firmly against the top of Dean's head and rocking a little against the mattress.

It was probably ten minutes at least before Dean was able to breathe normally and his shivering became more from cold than fear. Sam tugged and pulled at the sheets and blanket until he had them both covered up to their necks. He traced the curve of Dean's ear and the hinge of his jaw, urging him gently to raise his face.

Tell me?

'Sammy, I—' He dragged in a ragged breath, let it out slow. He felt a little like he was in shock—lightheaded, heart still pounding too fast, pulse fluttering in his throat like a terrified hummingbird. He didn't want to look at that vision, didn't want to come close enough to it to describe it for his brother. His thoughts slid against it like water on glass. Avoidance. 

'H-how can you…?' he stammered. 'And—and not—?'

Sam's hand stilled, cupped Dean's face firmly.

Tell me what you saw.

Dean shook his head, once, forcefully, but Sam held him, all but forced him to look upward and find Sam's intense gaze through the dark.

'I can't, Sammy,' Dean rasped out, and there was a sob behind it again. 

He couldn't remember the last time he'd fallen apart so completely. John would never have approved. Never did. Dean's cries in the night the months following Mary's death were answered at first only by John's gruff voice telling him from the table—where John sat all night awake to avoid his own nightmares—that it was only a dream and to go back to sleep, then by nothing at all. It wasn't until Sam had mysteriously begun having nightmares months after the fact and taken to only being able to sleep inside the warm curve of his brother's body, that Dean was comforted, almost even before he could wake, by the tiny, warm grasp of Sammy's fingers circling his own, still too small to ring more than his index and middle finger together. 

Sam changed tactics, slid down the bed a little, bringing them nose to nose, and pressed his lips to Dean's trembling ones, licked at them with a flick of his tongue.

Tell me.

Dean shuddered again, trying to slide backward. Sam knew just how to break him. A full frontal attack now when Dean's defenses were already cracked and crumbling would be an easy victory for Sam. Sam's grip tightened, dragged Dean's head back, and he tilted his mouth a little, angling closer. His tongue traced and retraced Dean's lower lip. His thumbs moved to glide along the upper edge of Dean's eyelids.

Close your eyes…and tell me.

Dean's eyes slid obediently closed under Sam's coaxing, and the vision immediately welled up. Black within black. Glimmering obsidian in the shape of eyes in a too, too familiar face—

'Jesus, no…' Dean moaned, struggling for air against Sam's still questing mouth. 'God, no. Please…no, no, no… Sam… Sammy, no!'

Dean reared back, eyes shooting open, sucking in air like he'd been dunked under water for too long, body convulsing in its own refusal to accept what he saw behind his closed lids. 

Sam was looking at him calmly, hands framing his face, and for a split second Dean couldn't tell the color of his eyes, couldn't find the field-of-high-summer green through the dark of the room, and thought he saw black on black. He jerked, clenched, body trying to flee in terror, but Sam's hands roamed back into his hair, palms sliding down the sides of his neck and out onto his still shaking shoulders beneath the blanket. Sam tipped his head up then, and Dean nearly cried in relief at the catch and slide of weak February dawn light through warm ochre and deep, dark-forest brown.

Sam kneaded his thumbs deep into Dean's shoulder joints, almost enough to cause pain, enough to keep him in the moment, to not let him slip back into the thin veil of dreaming. 

Dean…

'Black eyes,' Dean gasped. 'You had black eyes. The demon— And I couldn't— Didn't want to—'

Dean tripped and stumbled over the stream of thoughts, eyes still pinned open wide, not willing to chance seeing the vision from his nightmare again. Sam's thumbs continued to work, to urge him to talk in their silent, insistent circles. Dean swallowed, tried to choke the words back. He didn't want them in the open. He didn't want to think about this, about what he saw. He didn't want his brain to wheedle out the truth of it.

Sam's stroking stopped. Dean brought his vision back into focus on his brother's face from its stubborn avoidance looking over his shoulder at the barely there square of light around the one window in the room. Sam's eyes were bright and clear and calm, wise beyond his years like Dean had always thought they were, and there was regret in them—a very, very deep regret.

The truth, Dean. Tell yourself the truth.

Dean crushed Sam to him again, tried to hide his face, but Sam wouldn't let him. Dean worked his mouth noiselessly at first, tongue tangled around the words his brain did not want to produce for him, then slowly, haltingly,

'It was you.'

The air left Dean's lungs in a rush with the words, and he couldn't pull anymore in. He felt like a vice had closed around his chest, but he shoved the words out anyway, yielding to Sam's silent demand.

'You're the—' No. Nonono. Dean couldn't bring himself to say the word out loud. Wouldn't say it. Couldn't go that far, but he knew Sam knew that he understood what that missing word was. He licked his dry, cracked lips. 'It's you. It's how you get them to—how you get rid of them, or-or whatever it is you do. They _know_ you…'

Dean was shaking again, nearly as badly as when he'd just woken. He was hyperventilating, too, sucking at the air in desperate little sips, but his lungs refused to take it, bound up in panic as they were. Sam moved with a sudden lighting grace that Dean had always envied when they were sparring or hunting, and used the leverage of his leg on Dean's hip to roll them in the bed, settling Dean full length on top of him. He spread his legs wide, braced his feet on the mattress, and lifted up a little. The sudden intimate contact shocked Dean into dragging in a huge breath just exactly as Sam intended.

Sam set to rocking his hips in a slow easy rhythm, flattened his palms against Dean's back and stroked up and down in time to it, from his waist to the back of his neck, again and again, until Dean started to breathe with it, and Sam could feel the frantic beating of his heart slow to something that might not cause his brother to go into sudden cardiac arrest. 

Dean hung there, braced on his elbows either side of Sam's shoulders, panting a little, letting Sam move beneath him but unable to reciprocate as his brain still turned and twisted over the words he'd just spoken, the truth he'd let out into the open that could never be taken back. 

'Sammy, your back…' he protested weakly.

Sam shook his head.

I'm fine.

Dean stared down through the dim dark at his little brother's upturned face, still serene, always so calm, and it struck him suddenly that Sam didn't have nightmares, not since he was a baby, and only then in the few nights it had taken Dean to adopt letting Sam sleep in the same bed with him. Never after. No matter what he saw.

Dean let out a low, pained whine from deep in his throat and the tears started to come unbidden. Sam's hands were immediately on his face, cradling it, thumbs brushing away the burning salt tracks.

It's okay, Dean. It's okay. Let it happen.

Dean resisted, of course he did. He'd already been enough of a girl tonight as it was, and thank holy God that John was down the street again drowning himself, because this would not have been pretty otherwise. Not that it was anyway. But resisting only made it that much worse. The tears built and stung and forced their way out of the corners of his eyes, and the sobs…dear Christ, they felt like concussion bombs going off behind his ribs when he tried to hold them in, but dammit! He couldn't shatter like this. He needed to stay strong. For Sam.

Sam's fingers parted, spread wide, and framed Dean's ribcage, cradling it in his hands while Dean continued to fight for air.

You are strong, Dean, and the truth will only make you stronger. Let yourself see. Let yourself understand.

Dean shook his head again, fighting to close his eyes, but his brain wouldn't let him. His fear instinct was too strong in this, and something in his hind brain was still in denial, would not under any circumstances let him see those eyes again…dark, evil black framed in that oh so familiar softness that he loved with every cell and fiber of his being, and what exactly did that mean, then? If this truth he'd stumbled over were _the_ truth, and he loved it and would sacrifice for it, die for it, what did that make _him_?

'You don't have nightmares,' Dean rasped out, staring down into Sam's eyes, because he had to hold that image of those soft, perfectly human, warm brown-gold-green eyes until it was burned so deep in him that nothing could root it out, nothing could overshadow or replace it. 

Sam touched his face, a thumb tracing the slightly crooked line of his nose where it had never healed quite right from a Ruguru hunt six years ago.

No. I don't.

'B-because you always have,' Dean managed on a stuttering breath.

Sam nodded slowly, pushed his fingers back into Dean's hair.

Yes.

Dean shuddered and went with the gentle pull of Sam's hand. He slid down in the bed, settled himself in the V of Sam's legs, pressed his belly down into the still gentle rocking of his brother's hips, and rested his cheek against Sam's breastbone, ear seeking out the steady pulse of his heart.

'How long?' he asked.

Always. As long as I can remember.

'When you were a baby then, you only…pretended. For me.'

Sam let out a soft breath of silent laughter. 

Yes. For you. And for me.

Dean nodded against Sam's chest and lay still, focusing on the feel of his little brother's half-hard cock pushing against his belly. It wasn't intended to fire passion, and it didn't. Sam's body, all of it, pressed up against him, was a comfort. It always had been. Dean's own cock filled a little in natural reaction to their intimacy, but it flooded his veins with a drugging warmth instead of impassioned fire, and he knew that was exactly Sam's plan. 

The kid knew him so damn well. 

'Have you _ever_ dreamed, Sammy? Ever anything _good_?'

Sam stilled and Dean lifted his head, then the rest of himself when he saw Sam's face, eyes closed, mouth pressed in a thin line, but it wasn't pain and it wasn't exactly grief, either—not for himself anyway.

'Sam?'

Sam opened his eyes and a tear slipped from the corner. Dean moved to kiss it away, but Sam planted a hand in his chest, firmly spread directly over his heart.

I dream every day, Dean. While I'm awake. And it's good…always, so very good. Because it's you.

Dean's eyes teared up again and he ducked his head back down to hide against Sam's sternum. He breathed in and out, harsh and hoarse, wrecked straight through to his soul.

'Dammit, Sammy, I love you so much.'

I know.

''M never, _ever_ going to let it happen. Never.'

It already has, Dean.

'No.'

You can't change the past.

Dean pushed his arms under Sam's back, heedless of his still healing wounds, and Sam made no sound of protest. Then Dean hugged him hard until he felt like he might just be able to merge the two of them, to push himself through Sam's soft belly and tender bones and make them into one being. Sam answered by wrapping his legs around Dean's waist and his arms around his shoulders and hugging him back just as hard.

'Watch me,' Dean whispered. 'Just watch me.'


End file.
